1. Technical Field of Invention
The preferred embodiments of the invention relates to a comprehensive computer system for automating and facilitating the performing and processing of tasks, information transfer, and information storage associated with the home sale, mortgage origination and settlement process, and the home mortgage refinancing origination and settlement process, over a distributed computing network.
2. Discussion of Background References
Traditionally the home sale process, the mortgage origination process and the settlement/title process have been considered to be three entirely separate functions. Typically the real estate company is in one office, the mortgage company in another and the settlement company in still another. They typically have never been looked at as parts of one larger, continuous process, particularly when it comes to technology.
Consequently, real estate sales, mortgage companies and settlement companies use various and differing technology to assist them in performing their respective sale, mortgage and settlement activities. The existing programs for the real estate office do only portions, but not all of the functions for the real estate agent, or real estate sales office of a new home builder; some only access the ‘multiple listing service’ or MLS, or builder home inventory in the case of the builder, others only create the contract of sale or other contract documents, others keep track of buyers, sellers, and service providers such as home inspectors, termite inspectors, etc., while still other programs only order services.
Similarly, various programs for mortgage origination do portions of the process. Some just send mortgage ‘loan quotes’ to the borrower and allow them to select a loan, while other mortgage programs are ‘point of sale’ (POS) programs either for the borrower to interact with a Internet web page to fill in information to request a loan or for a mortgage loan officer to take down the borrower's application information, often use another ‘loan origination system’ (LOS) to underwrite the loan, and still other mortgage lender programs prepare loan documents such as the note, deed of trust, disclosures, affidavits, etc. after the loan is approved.
Then there are still other programs which the settlement companies use that do strictly the title, settlement and closing functions such as taking orders, ordering services such as title reports and surveys, and preparing the settlement statement (HUD-1), including escrow accounting, and prepare documents such as the title commitment and policy, affidavits, and legal documents such as recording forms, deeds, etc.
In addition to these programs, the real estate agent, the lender and the settlement company may use a combination of e-mail, faxes and phones to communicate with others to complete their part of the process.
These multitudes of programs have limited value and slow the process because users have to rehandle, reenter, and wait for information from other parties; they have limited functionality in common and require use of more than one tool for users to perform their jobs thereby causing needless work, delay and expense.
To date, no one has operationally connected these different existing real estate agent, mortgage lender and settlement technologies together. The so-called ‘transaction management’ systems, which have been in existence since the late 1990s, have been primarily designed with features for the real estate agent to use, some having a built-in property ‘listings’ or home database, and a ‘contact database’ for keeping track of buyers, seller, service providers, etc. They typically combine features for scheduling and tracking tasks, a ‘group calendar’ for parties to monitor activities and status on the Internet, and for ordering services by the real estate agent, buyer or seller such as inspections and settlement.
A number of these ‘transaction management’ programs have added additional parties to the process in the form of a ‘transaction coordinator’ or a ‘move consultant’ which just adds to the overall cost of doing the process and does not simplify the process.
All of the existing technologies are incomplete, leaving gaps in the process, and as a result they have not been well received in the market place and the overwhelming majority has either gone out of business or has been bought in liquidation proceedings over the past several years. All of these ‘transaction management’ systems deal with only portions of the over-all home sale, mortgage and settlement process, and still require, among other things, many of the users to reenter information in a separate programs to use this technology, or require their ‘integration’ with different programs to try to ‘connect’ the different programs used by the real estate company, mortgage company and settlement company to communicate with each other.
None of these ‘transaction management’ programs allow, among other things, the lender or the settlement company to perform their respective tasks within these programs. Instead they must continue to use their separate, existing, older technology together with these new programs. While the lender may receive some loan application information and a settlement company may receive order information from a website, and they may be able to receive documents which are created in other programs and then ‘downloaded’ by the other parties, and may be able to ‘communicate’ with others in the process, or view the status on a webpage in the ‘transaction management system’ this information still has to be transported at some point to their older existing technology to perform their part of the process, either manually by a person, or by ‘integrating’ the ‘transaction management’ system with their existing mortgage loan origination or settlement technologies.
There are literally dozens of real estate sale programs, dozens of mortgage origination programs and dozens of settlement and title programs, each having different functions and design structures, field names, etc. To try to integrate all these technologies is very complex, ineffective and costly with the resulting information shared and functionality being limited in scope and there for the value to the users is limited.
The alternative is to have a loan officer who takes the application wait for and reenter information into their existing loan technology, and then the settlement company personnel have to again wait for reenter information into their existing software and then somehow get it back to the other. If there are any changes, or information is incorrect, the then whole waiting, communication and reentry process begins over again. These ‘transaction programs’ only allow ‘posting’ or ‘uploading’ of lender documents or settlement closing documents to be sent or shared with others. But, none of the programs have provisions for creating these ‘other’ documents by the lender, settlement companies or others which must be created in their existing separate programs.
Not surprisingly, none of these so-called ‘transaction management’ programs have been very successful in the market and there have been numerous business failures by the companies which have produced them.
There is, however, no complete program that performs, for example, the entire process home sale, mortgage origination and settlement process in one single technology platform including, for example, all the sale activities of the real estate agent or builder sales office, all the loan origination activities of the mortgage loan office, and all the activities of the settlement company. Similarly, there is no complete program that performs, for example, the entire home mortgage refinancing origination and settlement process in one technology platform.
The various embodiments of the present invention provide substantial improvements over, among other things, the forgoing background technologies and the technologies disclosed in, e.g., the following references:
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